Paradox
by ArtisticRainey
Summary: Virgil sees a problem and wants to fix it. John is the problem but doesn't want to see it. Mild angst. Hurt/comfort. Bros being bros. Some swearing. WIP.
1. Virgil

**Virgil**

Virgil doesn't do space. There's something about the vastness of the expanse of nothing that sets his teeth on edge. Of course, John would argue that it's _not_ full of nothing. At best, it's filled with the swirling ice of comet trails, with dust and neutrinos and radiation. At worst, even a cubic metre of vacuum has a few hydrogen and helium atoms floating around in it. But that's John-speak. To Virgil, if it looks like nothing, then it is nothing. And that is a terrifying thought.

Never being one to take unnecessary risks, Virgil avoids space at all costs. It's not fear; it's logic. You don't go to dangerous places unless you have to. And if course, he won't hesitate if he _has_ to. If there's a life in danger, he'll set aside his worries. They no longer matter. They pale like fading photographs beside the red hot risk to life. In those moments, Virgil fears nothing but his own inaction.

And so, one Wednesday, around 3pm, he calls down the space elevator. Because it's come to that. His brother's being stubborn and thus, it's time to act.

The elevator's whiteness is empty. His thick-soled boots clank on the deck plating as he steps in. The restraints are tight around his broad shoulders, since they're normally reserved for his slight redhead sibling. Too slight. Too thin. Too pale. Not enough real food and real sunshine.

Not enough sense.

So Virgil puts away his thoughts about the unending expanse of solitary death around him and ascends. Up to the heavens. Then beyond. Out into John's empty realm.

The vibrations unnerve Virgil more than he'd ever admit. They shudder and jolt him to his core, setting his stomach at an angle. It's not sickness. It's not fear. It's a lopsided unease, a sensation that man isn't supposed to trust his life to nanofiber cable and artificial atmosphere. As he rides the thin thread, climbing up through the blue to the navy to the black, Virgil wonders what their father would say to that. The man who spent more time on the moon than on Earth for so many months of so many years.

Virgil has always been more of his mother's son. He favours her colouring, sable hair and eyes of darkest brown. He has her long pianist's fingers. He has her gentleness of touch. Her sweetness. Her joy.

John is very much cut from the cloth of their father. He's a workaholic, revelling when his roots are deep in reports and comms. chatter. He loves to ask questions. Why? Why _not_? Those are his favourites. They were Jeff's favourites, too.

But Virgil has enough of their father in his makeup. He has Jeff Tracy's uncanny knack of knowing when someone needs a good knock to the head to let sense reign again. That's why he's doing this. That's why he's here. And when he docks, he lets out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. The exhale is long, controlled. And then he heads into Five.

John isn't waiting for him. Because John's doing fifteen thousand things at once. And that's the problem, as not one of those things is related to looking after his own health. Virgil sees flashes of medical readouts, information gathered from the fingerprints of bio-circuitry on John's body. He grits his teeth. It's not good.

Virgil finds his quarry in the galley, a digital report in one hand and a space-safe container of dehydrated fruit in the other (dust removed, of course).

"Virgil," John says. "What can I do for you?"

There's no surprise in his tone. You can't sneak onto Five. Not from the elevator, anyway. Still, Virgil expected at least an eyebrow raise at his presence. At this moment, he's barely getting a glance. It's not rudeness. It's just John and the conundrum of his one-track mind and multiple focus - all of which is on work and none on himself.

Virgil feels sweat bead on his brow. It's not heat. It can't be. Five is always steady, its artificial air held at sixty seven Fahrenheit exactly. No, it's not heat. It's worry. Not about what he's about to say. Rather, about what the reaction to his words might be.

He breathes in again, slow and controlled. He reaches out and pushes the tablet computer down with those pianist's fingers - fingers just like their mother's.

"John," he says. He catches his brother's eyes now. "It's time to come home."

Blinking, John sets down the container. Its parched contents rattle.

"Why?" he asks.

Of course he does. It's one of his favourite questions. Just like their dad.

Virgil comes back with a gentle truth because that's what their mother taught him to do.

"You've fallen below sixty-three kilos again," he says. "I've been keeping tabs. It's time to come home."

John blinks at the news as if it has stunned him. His hands, now bereft of the comfort of work, go to his stomach. His fingers settle on the blue fabric of his suit. They trace a hesitant path around the pattern of hexagons.

"Really?" he asks, pointed red brows pulling together. "I hadn't noticed."

Nodding, Virgil reaches out. He plants a hand on his brother's shoulder. He can't feel John's bones but he knows they're there, covered by a meagre film of paper skin.

Of course he hadn't realised. Virgil can't even tell now. John's suit has swaddled him in shadow. It's padded in some places. It's thickened by biometrics in others. From his swan neck to his sinewed fingers and toes, John's covered up.

But Virgil knows what's under there: pneumatized bones and atrophied muscles. John's not just lacking in fat. He's lacking in _density_. It's times like this that when his feet hit the ground, his face follows soon after. At least, it does if Virgil's not there.

Of course, Virgil is there. He's standing amidst the great expanse of nothing that isn't nothing. He's facing a brother who's fine but not fine.

John blinks again. He swallows. Then he nods.

"Okay," he says.

Virgil doesn't grin. There's no cause for celebration yet. He won't declare victory for another twenty-seven pounds.

But he does smile when John starts the reroute procedure. He's sending control of comms. to the island but, more crucially for Virgil, he's preparing himself for Earth.

And it will be a bumpy landing. It always is.


	2. John

**John**

Relieved of duty. Those are three words that John Tracy can't stand. Even worse, the thought that part of his job is now being done by his _grandmother_ …

Guilt jabs like pinpricks. That's not fair, of course. Grandma is more than capable of manning comms. She might be older and she might _say_ she doesn't do technology, but she still grew up with constantly-changing communications networks, she still lived through the birth of social media, still made one of the first holo-calls on the planet…

John turns in the bed and squeezes his eyes shut, cocooning himself in a duvet fortress. If he's not allowed to work, he refuses to operate at all. Thus, it is three p.m. and as yet, he hasn't pulled himself from bed.

The others are out doing their jobs. Or at least, they were, since John's 96.4% certain that the rumbling he can hear – even through the soundproof glass – is Two returning. And Two's return means Virgil's return. And that means John's about to get his ass handed to him in the gentlest way possible.

But he still has time. He could get up, maybe even half-dressed, before Virgil arrives at his door. And yet John is still swaddled in blankets, mentally calculating the probability of Virgil _not_ knocking the door, when the door knocks.

Oh.

His brother doesn't wait for entrance to be granted. He comes in point-five of a second after his second knock. His footfalls are heavy on the wooden floor as he walks forward, disturbing the humdrum of the aircon.

Then the curtains are pulled back, the window is opened and John dives six feet under the covers. Because he hates Virgil just a bit right now, since all of this is his fault.

It isn't, of course. And John knows it. But he doesn't want to know it. It's much easier to blame someone else than to turn the camera within.

"It stinks in here," Virgil says. "I'll go start the shower."

The heavy footsteps pad into the en suite and John keeps his eyes squeezed shut. How very Virgil. Not, _you stink_. Not, _you need to wash_ (those sentiments are reserved for Gordon and Gordon alone). No. Virgil doesn't approach the problem of the lump in the bed with the tact of their father, all blanket-wrenching and tongue-lashing (a more efficient approach). Instead, Virgil points the issue out without pointing fingers. And it's only for the resonance of that approach, which echoes somewhere deep in John's chest, that he slides out of bed, hair akimbo, tottering on Bambi legs.

Virgil reappears and pulls John's too-large sleep shirt off before he can protest. The redhead is in the shower before he's had time to process just what's happened. One minute, his calves were leaning against the cool bedframe. The next, his whole body is slumped against the freezing tiles. And camouflage rains down on him.

He can't calculate how long it's been when at last he shuts off the sluice.

It takes him twice as long as it should to cross to the door. He doesn't remember that towels exist for five point three seconds, by which stage, the floor is already soaked. He misses the handle by ten degrees, sending his knuckles into the door frame.

By the time he makes it to the bed again, Virgil is holding a pair of sweatpants that look like they belong to an abnormally tall child. John takes them because elasticated waists are the only thing keeping his butt from greeting the sunlight.

When Virgil hands him an ancient t-shirt, John half-turns. He just about catches his reflection in the long corner mirror. He stops. Drops the t-shirt. Steps forward. His fingertips ghost against the glass, clouding its streaked surface with heat.

"Holy _hell_."

It's the most appropriate of all the inappropriate things he could say in all the languages he could use. The man in the mirror is a stranger from the neck down. His deltoids look abnormal, like globes, compared to his withered biceps and pectoralis major. The lines of his serratus anterior look like sharpie marks on his canvas skin. And there's a bottle-neck narrowing at his waist that he hasn't seen since his finals at Harvard.

Virgil, three metres back in the reflection, still looks wider.

"Yeah," is his reply. "Exactly."

John turns his back on the stranger and drowns himself in the t-shirt. It has that over-washed softness of an old garment. Plucking the front up, John studies the upside band down logo. He doesn't recognise it. Come to think of it, green has never really been his colour. It's more…

He releases the fabric and scowls.

"Is this _Alan's_?"

Virgil has the decency to look a little shamefaced at that. He nods.

"It was," he says. Then his eyes harden. "It's too small for him now."

John's chin falls and he looks down. It's nowhere near a snug fit on him, though the hem skirts his belly button.

He has no interest in appropriateness any longer.

"Fucking Jesus," he spits. "What the shit?"

"Yeah," Virgil says again, too polite for profanity. "Exactly."

Their mother taught them not to swear. Their father said it was okay in certain circumstances. To John, this is such a circumstance. Because it has to be. What else could your reaction be when you look in the mirror and see a stranger in your skin? Someone nothing more than a bag of bones?

John won't turn around but he doesn't want to look at Virgil either. Virgil is fine. He's not the one who looks like a skeleton with a skin graft, as Grampa Grant used to say. He's not the one who's apparently dropped a seventh of their body weight without even noticing.

" _How_?" John asks.

He doesn't have the answer. Neither does Virgil, who looks at him with those liquid eyes, chocolate smooth in their compassion.

John won't turn around but he doesn't want to look at Virgil either. So instead, he stands stock-still and closes his eyes.

Maybe that'll make it all go away.


End file.
